Jim Gray, 63, a renowned US Computer Scientist and Microsoft researcher has gone missing at sea, and the coastguard have called off their search for him.

However, friends (including Amazon engineers, and Google’s Sergey Brin) and family, who are still determined to find him have now managed to gain satellite and aerial images from NASA used to supply Google Earth of the area of sea he was at. They are now combing them, and have used the Amazon mechanical turk to invite many, many people to participate. There are thousands of images.

Gray has contributed vastly to computer science for around 30 years, with a prestigious Turing Award.

I will be clicking through and seeing if I can spot his boat in the satellite images. Do you think you could help?

Links

• http://www.mturk.com - Register with Mturk to help find and accept hits for the Jim Gray Search.
• NBC - Public’s help sought in search for Microsoft’s Jim Gray
• The Register - Coastguard calls off search for Jim Gray
• NBC - Coast Guard To Call Off Search For Missing Sailor
• Orionrobots Describing Mechanical Turk
• Jim Gray Bio on his Microsoft Research Homepage